Christian’s sitting on the front step when I get home. The porch light casts a halo of soft glow around him, like a spotlight. He has a mug of what I can only guess is my mom’s raspberry tea in his hand, which he instantly puts down on the porch. He jumps to his feet. I fervently wish I could fly away.
“I’m sorry,” he says earnestly. “I was dumb. I was stupid. I was an idiot.”
I have to admit, he does look adorable standing there all moony-eyed telling me how stupid he is. Not fair.
I sigh.
“How long have you been sitting here?” I ask.
“Not long,” he says. “Like three hours.” He points to the mug. “The free refills made it only seem like two.”
I refuse to smile at his joke and push past him into the house, where my mom suddenly jumps up from the couch and heads for her office without a word. For that I’m grateful.
“Come in,” I call to him, as it’s clear he’s not going to go away any time soon.
He follows me into the kitchen.
“Okay,” I say. “Here’s the deal. We will not discuss prom, ever, ever again.”
His eyes flash with relief. I grab his mug and put it next to the sink. I take a moment to steady myself against the counter.
“Let’s start over,” I say, my back to him.
That’d be nice, I think, to start over. No visions, no expectations, no humiliation. Just boy meets girl. Him and me.
“Okay.”
“I’m Clara.” I turn to face him and hold out my hand.
The corner of his mouth lifts in a suppressed smile. “I’m Christian,” he murmurs, taking my hand in his and squeezing it gently.
“Nice to meet you, Christian,” I say like he’s a normal guy. Like when I close my eyes I don’t see him standing in the middle of a forest fire. Like him touching me right now doesn’t send a pang of yearning and recognition rippling through me.
“Totally.”
We go back out to the front porch. I make more tea and get a blanket for him and a blanket for me and we sit on the front step, looking at the diamond-studded sky.
“Stars were never this bright in California,” he says.
I was thinking the same thing.
By the time my mom comes out of her office and politely (and ecstatically, I think) informs us that it’s late and it’s a school night and Christian had better get himself home, I know so much more about him. I know that he lives with his uncle, who owns the Bank of Jackson Hole and a couple of real estate offices in town. Where his parents are, he doesn’t really go into, although I get the distinct impression that they’re dead, and have been for a long time. He’s super attached to their housekeeper, Marta, who’s been around since he was ten years old. He loves Mexican food, and skiing of course, and playing the guitar.
“Enough about me,” he says after a while. “Let’s talk about you. Why did you come here?” he asks.
“Oh, uh—” I search my brain for my rehearsed answer. “My mom. She wanted to get out of California, move somewhere that’s not so crowded, get some fresh air. She thought it’d be good for us.”
“And was it? Good for you, I mean?”
“Sort of. I mean, school hasn’t exactly been easy, trying to make friends and all that.” I blush and glance away, wondering if he’s thinking about the nickname Hot Bozo that’s so popular among his buddies. “But I like it. . . . I feel like I belong here.”
“I know what that’s like,” he says.
“What?”
Now it’s his turn to look embarrassed. “I just mean, when I moved here, it was hard for a while. I didn’t fit in.”
“Weren’t you, like, five?”
“Yeah, I was five, but even then. This is a weird place to move to, on a lot of levels, especially from California. I remember that first snowstorm—I thought the sky was falling down.”
I laugh and shift slightly, and our shoulders touch. Zap. Even through our clothes. I move away. Business, Clara, business, I tell myself. Don’t lose it over this guy now. I clear my throat lightly.
“But you feel like you belong now, right?”
He nods. “Yeah, of course. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is where I belong.”
Then he tells me that he’s thinking about going to New York for the summer, on some kind of business school internship for high school students.
“I’m not stoked at the idea of the internship, but summer in New York City sounds like an adventure,” he says. “I’ll probably go.”
“All summer?” I ask, a little stricken. But the fire, I want to say. You can’t go.
“My uncle,” he says, and then he’s quiet for a moment. “He wants me to get a business degree and take over at the bank someday. He’s got expectations, you know, things he thinks I should do to prepare myself and all that mumbo jumbo. I don’t know what I want to do.”
“I get that,” I say, thinking he doesn’t know the half of it. “My mom’s like that, always expecting so much out of me. She’s always saying that I have a purpose in life, something I was born to do, and that I just need to figure out what it is. No pressure there, right? I’m afraid of letting her down.”
“Well,” he says, turning to me and smiling in a way that makes my heart speed up. “Sounds like we’re both in trouble.”
The remaining weeks of school fly past in a blur. Christian calls me every few days, and we make small talk. He sits next to me in class and cracks jokes all period. A couple of times he even eats lunch at my table, which totally wigs out the Invisibles. In the space of a week the entire school is speculating over whether or not we’re a red-hot item.
I’m wondering that myself.
“Told you,” says Angela when I talk to her about it. “I’m never wrong, C.”
“That’s comforting. Can you focus, please? I still don’t know anything about the fire. I don’t know why he would be there that day. I don’t know where it happens. I thought if I got to know him better, I’d find out, but—”
“You’ve got time. Just enjoy the company,” she says.
Wendy, on the other hand, is barely masking her disapproval over the whole Christian thing. But then she never liked the idea.
“I told you,” she says primly. “Christian’s like a god. And gods don’t make good boyfriends.”